PocketTorah App Reviews

Sound does not work for Pocket Torah in my iPhone 6S Plus. Please fix!

This week’s Haftarah, Vaeyrah, the chanting does not match the text, which should be Kings 4: 1-37.

I got this app as a way to learn my Torah portion better, and this seemed to be the one most recommended, And yeah, for the first minute of opening the app it works great. You can click on words if you want to hear it repeated and it’s chanted slowly enough that you can easily pick it up. However, if you’re trying to play it again, it begins to glitch A LOT. Sometimes the pause button doesn’t work or is super delayed. Or the highlighting will be out of sync with the chanting. Either way, it’s immensely frustrating and it’s super hard to learn on it because you have to exit or close the window every time. Honestly, you might be better just learning on YouTube. It’s too bad, because this app would have been great without the bugs…

My daughter has Zachor as her haftorah and it is not in the app. Please add the special portions!

A great, great help in preparing to read. One demerit: crashes on my iPad Air 4 (but not on my iPad Air 2) when I select “This Week’s Torah Readings”.

CHECK YALLS SPEELEN YA GOT ZEN TYPOS IN MA PARASHAT BOI!!!!!

This is a really great app but the only downside is not being able to search for your portion and it not letting you save it as your portion

The pause button rarely works. I tried re-downloading and that did not help.

I was Bar Mitzvah in 2022 at age 68. I have read Torah a few times since then, and it has been difficult. Several months ago a friend recommended Pocket Torah. Your app made all the difference. The recording and the ability to switch between the prayer book font with vowels and the script in the Torah scroll make preparation so much easier. On Giving Tuesday I donated to AJWS to pay it forward. You’re the best.

Pocket Torah is my most favorite app, I use it whenever I’m reading if I need to make sure I’m reading my trope right or anything else. But I have to close the app every 4 or 5 times I read a section or verse because the yellow highlight stops being in sync with the words being chanted. And then the pause button or back button don’t work either. You can only have so much time practicing before you have to reboot everything. It’s quite frustrating to have to close and reload the app every time, on top of having to re-find my portion. PLEASE fix the bugs!!!! But otherwise, a really great app.

The app itself is great shower two things I noticed. The app gives no way to provide feedback to the developer when a mistake is found. And I found a big mistake - for parshah vayera (fourth parshah in the first of the five books of the Torah) the wrong haftorah is provided both in words and chanting - you have it as 1 kings 4:1-37 but it should actually be 2 kings 4:1-37

Nice app but kind of buggy. Needs an update

This is a fantastic app. Truly helpful. That said, i wonder if they might consider re-recording the Haftarah for this week, Shabbat Chazon (parshat Devarim) to incorporate the Eicha trope switches that are traditionally used in chanting it. I think it would be a great help.

Wonderful app, except maybe consider a dark mode?

My friend is having her bat mitzvah and this app really helped with mine, so I showed it to her and right now, she says it’s freezing up every so often and that makes focused studying really difficult. Please fix this!!!

I needed this app to learn a Torah portion for a service. It was handy but…. I put the setting on “slow” and it doesn’t save it. Every single time I sign in I have to go into settings and reset it to slow. Also, it’s glitchy. I’ll hit pause and it won’t pause. Then, when it does pause eventually, I can’t get it to play again. They need to work out some bugs with this.

I love the app, and the different voices. I really like getting to practice with the translations on or off. The thing I hate is that the pause button is either too small or too insensitive. It’s frustrating not to be able to start and stop more fluidly

This app is easy to use and makes learning tirah readings easy. The parshas are read in a way that a normal person can learn from.

This is a really great app, and I totally love it. I especially love the way I can change the font size so as to make the margins fall in different places; this way I don’t rely on the placement of the text when it differs in the Torah from the Tikkun. However, I had to take off one star because the verse numbers are in your Tikkun. Why did you do that? It’s a cheat, and that’s a problem. There aren’t numbers for us to follow when we’re looking in Torah. LOL That’s a significant oversight in this training app. Otherwise, it’s a super helpful app; 21st Century Torah! Todah!

I was reading Shemot. The yellow highlight was not in sync with the reading. It was a word or two ahead of the reading. It is very distracting to a veteran with PTSD.

The Haftarah for Vayera is incorrect. Could you guys correct it?

This app is a great help to anyone who wishes to study the weekly Torah reading, but is obviously not produced by Orthodox Jews, because the recordings are of women.

A terrific learning tool! Here are three modest suggestions to get my five stars: 1. Favorites —I need to save the parts I’m working on for quick access. 2. Practice reminder notifications — remind me to take 5 minutes to practice my part! Duolingo does this quite effectively, why shouldn’t this app? 3. Two words — DARK MODE! All in all a great app and appreciate having it. Thank you!

Love this app for practicing for a Torah reading. With a number of B’nei Mitzvah coming up, have shared it with the next generation. Great learning tool.

The screen is blank

Sephardic or mizrache tone pleaseeee….. Thank you

I’d give it a 5 star if it didn’t crash so much, when I tap on “this weeks parsha”. Too bad the developer doesn’t pay attention to the app, whereby updating it. Last update 3 yrs ago 🥺. That may be why it crashes. Also, so about a month or so, I couldn’t even open it without it crashing.

This is a great app that has all the Parshot chanted with each word highlighted in time with the audio. Hebrew with vowels, tikkun, and inter linear English translation available as well. Paired with Pocket Trope app you can work on your chanting for Torah and haftarah with ease. I love that they added a button for this weeks parsha. Suggestion: it would be nice to have a choice of cantors. For example I prefer the female cantor sometimes because the melodies are sung more which is closer to my style. Some cantors sound very nasally even though the general melody is correct.

I just updated my app and now I can’t access this week’s reading on my iPhone 8 IOS 14.4

I updated my phone to iOS 14.3 and the app no longer works. Please make this app compatible with the new iPhone software!

Add an auto playback button for all things (to play infinitely)

I like the app, but I see that it only has the Aliyah breakdowns of Haftarot for the Shabbat Torah readings. Are there any plans to add the holidays? I know that some holiday Haftorahs are also read during the year, but I had to go to another app for the Haftorah for Yom Kippur (which is only read then).

Trying to check myself in preparation for chanting Jonah for mincha Yom Kippor...not here!! MK

I love the app and have been using it and recommending it for years. In the list of Torah readings, weren’t the book and chapter references once provided alongside the name of each portion? That was useful for those of us who don’t know everything.

Great app really helped me prepare for bar Mitzvah

Found this app to help with my son’s Bar-Mitzvah and it’s great. A couple of minor things though: 1. It crashes when you try to open this week’s portion. 2. When you change the font size and speed and ask it to save those settings it does not. 3. It would be great if they had options for the double portions. 4. The reader’s voice isn’t completely clear to me - audio could be crisper. But - it’s a great tool! Hope they can update.

Very good

I have a couple of minor updates to suggest. The first is to be able to bookmark a week’s portion . The second is that when one changes the font size, it doesn’t stay that size, so that it has to be done every time accessing the app and portion. I would also suggest adding in or offering the options of the different way portions are read, ie triennial. I’m sure it’s extra work for the developers, but good for users desiring it. Thank you in advance.

This app is the best tikkun app I have found. It is the only app I have found for tikkuns that also has audio — great for teaching kids for bar/bat mitzvah. Thank you! It needs some updates though: 1. It takes a lot of space — ten times more than most apps, and than the companion Pocket Torah app. 2. There is a weird bug where if you go to another app and come back to this one, it starts flashing and only showing part of the page. It also would be great to be able to have this app on Google Play as well so that it can be used with Chrome books or with Androids.

This is an OK app, but as my Rabbi and I went through the Parsha on here to learn my part (Vayakhel), we noticed some significant errors with the trope. The reader seems to be rushing through to get it done without any real Kavanah. That being said, if you are looking for an app to help with pronunciation or to see a Tikkun, then this is a decent app. To learn the trope properly, I strongly recommend the ort website

Only thing missing is the Kohen-Levi-Yisroel breakdown for the 1st Aliyah for Monday and Thursday readings

I like this app a lot. I can follow the Torah potion for the week while it’s being read in the synagogue I attend easily with this app. I’m trying to use it along with my Hebrew language studies to learn to read the Torah portions myself. The only drawback to this app is that I wish I could click on each word individually without it starting to reading the whole portion once it starts. I want to be able to read a word in the Torah portion, then click that word to check myself without it auto playing the whole thing.

Crashes every time opening the daily parasha. Love his app but please fix. Thanks!

Looking for a way to contact you. Still terrific app but crashes both on iPhone & iPad when try to go to the wee Torah portion. מיקי קמבל

Whenever I go onto the app, it always takes me about five minutes to find my Torah portion. This app NEEDS A SEARCH BAR! Other than that, this is a very good app.

Easy to use Helpful to read in Hebrew Translation to understand what you are reading

App works fine to browse the various parshat but the Weekly Torah Readings doesn’t work anymore.

I like love listening! It helps me learn Hebrew.

This app is awesome!! I am writing this review to say that this app is very useful and to mention to some of the other reviewers who have a problem with women singing. The Torah wasn't just given to men, you know! Just because something is tradition doesn't make it right.....

While I truly appreciate the labor of love that is putting together a free application that contains the entire cantillation of the Torah, I feel inclined to point out the inconsistency between this app and “Pocket Torah Trope.” While “Pocket Torah Trope” uses only the trope system crafted by Abraham Binder in its examples, this application plays back readers using multiple different systems of Torah cantillation.